Tag Archives: The King

Roundup: Delay to delivery?

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The new natural resource minister, Tim Hodgson, gave a speech in Calgary yesterday and everyone in the energy sector was all hot and bothered because he insisted that they were moving to a culture of delivery instead of delay. And you’ll have to forgive my cynicism, but that seems to completely ignore what the actual issues of delay have been, and if you say “Liberal regulation!” you’re going to get a smack. The premise of saying they need “one project, one review” ignores that that’s been the case for ages now—there are no duplicative reviews, because federal and provincial reviews look at different things, and on projects where they had shared jurisdiction, they set up a joint review panel so that it was *gasp!* one review. Anyone who says they were mired in duplication is frankly not being that honest.

The real issue has been proper consultation, which is what leads projects to wind up in litigation, particularly from Indigenous groups. Harper’s attempt to reform assessments to “streamline” them meant that most of those projects wound up in litigation because, well, they ignored their obligations. In some cases, like Northern Gateway, the Conservatives ignored the process that they put into place for meaningful consultation, and well, the project died on the vine as a result. And with BC and Ontario both pushing legislation to “streamline” projects which basically means bulldozing over environmental and Indigenous obligations, well, that’s all going to wind up in litigation too. This was the whole point of the Impact Assessment Act that Jason Kenney in particularly successfully villainized—it was to ensure proper consultation up-front, at the design phase of a project, so that the rest of the process would go faster because you did the hard work at the beginning. But it became the subject of lies and disinformation, and yes, the federal government’s attempt to exert jurisdiction over certain projects because the polluting effects cross borders didn’t convince the Supreme Court of Canada, but that didn’t render the entire statute or the issues of up-front consultation obsolete or moot, and nobody seems to want to explain that part.

One more thing about Hodgson’s speech was the he singled out Pathways Alliance as a project he wants to see move forward. I’m really hoping that this means he’s telling them to put up or shut up, because we know that they basically went dark because their claims about building a massive carbon capture and storage hub were overblown and they were about to face legal consequences for greenwashing thanks to new powers for the Competition Bureau. And frankly, the whole point of the emissions cap was to tell the energy sector to put up or shut up—that they have been boasting about how they’re going to reduce their emissions, so when the government basically told them to prove it, suddenly they started crying about how this as a “production cap” and it was unfair to them. Girl, please. You insisted you could do this, so prove it.

Meanwhile, we’ve had our first glimpse into Mark Carney’s PMO, and while he’s insistent on punctuality, business attire, and UK spellings (hooray!), and decision paralysis is not setting in (so far), he’s also starting to micromanage all kinds of things that he shouldn’t be, which sounds an awful lot like a Harper trait. Part of the problem so far is a lack of a proper chief of staff, and that ministers haven’t staffed up yet either, and yet he wants to operate at a breakneck pace. But there are other warning signs—because he doesn’t understand politics, he really hasn’t given thought to how to navigate a minority House of Commons, to say nothing of the Senate (ahem), and not knowing how to deal with Parliament could lead to a situation where the Conservatives can team up with the Bloc and the NDP yet again to start frustrating anything passing once again—and for all of their talk about working together and getting things done, don’t think for a second that they’re actually not more interested in scoring points and embarrassing the Liberals. Trudeau lost the ability to manage these things, in part because of disinterest, and we’ll see if Carney doesn’t make the same mistake.

Ukraine Dispatch

There was a massive missile and drone attack against Kyiv overnight, which has injured at least eight people (Photos). Ukraine and Russia exchanged 390 prisoners each on Friday, marking one of the largest swaps since the war began.

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Roundup: The new ambassador doesn’t get it

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The new US ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, has been making the media rounds, and is just one more in a long line of American politicians who just can’t understand why Canadians are so upset with the Americans. (It’s a complete mystery!) Surely, we must be happy that we could have the “lowest tariffs of any country,” instead of, oh, the free trade that allowed for integrated supply chains between both countries. Why wouldn’t we be happy with that? And in a preview for an interview to be aired over the weekend, he says there are easier ways to send messages to Trump than to bring over the King.

*sighs*

Having the King open the next session of Parliament is not only about sending a message to Trump. Yes, that is part of it, and you can bet that it’s actually going to be something he pays more attention to than a phone call because his attention span only lasts as long as the next person who talks to him, so what good is a phone call in that regard? Also? This is as much about domestic reassurance as it is a message to Trump. As Trump has threatened us, we had a bunch of people wrongly believe that the King needed to act unilaterally and say something that might cause a diplomatic incident, and others actually believed that he personally invited Trump on the second state visit when no, that was at the behest of the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer. And no, he can’t say anything unilaterally, because that goes against what constitutional monarchy stands for, and why there was the Glorious Revolution in 1688. If anyone is to blame for Charles not speaking up on Canada’s behalf earlier, it was Justin Trudeau’s, because he very much liked to ignore the Crown as much as he possibly could (probably because it pulled the focus away from him).

Oh, and Hoekstra keeps saying that the “51st state” stuff is over, and that Trump isn’t saying it, and they have more important things to worry about. But he said it just two weeks ago, and do you actually think that anything is really over for Trump? He’s incredibly angry with his past self for signing the New NAFTA. And I get that Hoekstra needs to play this particular role, but come on. Demonstrate that you’ve paid the slightest bit of attention to Canada since you were named ambassador, and read the room.

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Ukraine Dispatch

Russia is claiming to have taken a settlement between Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka in Donetsk region.

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Roundup: A single mandate letter for Cabinet

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Prime minister Mark Carney released his “mandate letter,” singular, yesterday following the “Cabinet planning forum,” which is how he’s re-branded a retreat—because nothing says Canada’s New Government™ like renaming everything. And the thing is, it’s not much of a mandate letter at all­, but rather a press release that lists seven priorities that essentially tasks ministers to figure out how their files fit into these priorities and do them, which are sufficiently broad that makes it hard to actually hold anyone to account, which was supposed to be the whole reason why Justin Trudeau made the mandate letters public in the first place (though his too were full of repetitive boilerplate language and values statements, but they did at least have some specific items for each minister).

Note: Apologies for this being late/incomplete, but I’ve been really sick the last couple of days, but I at least wanted to put something out before all of the links went stale.

In case you missed it:

  • My National Magazine profile of new justice minister Sean Fraser.
  • My weekend column that points to the big decisions that Mark Carney is going to have to make about the Senate.
  • My column demonstrates why we’re not really headed toward a two-party system in Canada, because it’s largely based on a false premise.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take on Carney’s creeping presidentialism with those “decision notes” he’s been signing for the cameras.

Ukraine Dispatch

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1925153620225310721

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Roundup: Holding confederation hostage

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Mid-afternoon Alberta time, premier Danielle Smith gave a live address which had all of the appearances of some kind of hostage video, where she is promising to kill confederation if her demands aren’t met. Those demands are largely outrageous in and of themselves—guaranteed pipeline access, killing all federal environmental protection laws that would affect Alberta, perverting equalisation to give them a “per capita share” (it doesn’t operate on a per capita basis), and taking any kind of export tax off the table that could be used as leverage against Trump if we needed it. It was grievance porn, and largely just riling up her base of lunatics—whom she also defended—as they gear up to force some kind of separatism referendum, even though that wouldn’t actually mean what they think it does.

Would like to hear more from the Alberta Premier about how the industrial carbon price is "crippling" in Alberta.A year ago, it was "working."www.theglobeandmail.com/business/art…

— Aaron Wherry (@aaronwherry.bsky.social) 2025-05-05T21:30:03.882Z

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The whole issue of the separatism referendum is also predicated on her being too-clever-by-half, saying she doesn’t believe in separation and believes in “sovereignty within a united Canada” (which is mostly horseshit), but she’s still going to game the rules to make it easier for the loons to force a referendum. “Oh, there’s no blood on my hands!” she insists, while she bought the knife and handed it to the loons. Politicians who use referendums as diversions or as a clever way of trying to defuse a situation have often seen that situation blow up in their faces, whether it was the capital flight from Quebec in 1980 and again in 1995, or Brexit. And like Brexit, she is willing to tell a bunch of lies to support it, Naheed Nenshi is denouncing this move and correctly pointing out that she is taking Albertans for fools, but Smith is slippery, and that’s going to be a problem the longer this is allowed to continue.

David Cameron thought he was being clever too.

— Stephanie Carvin (@stephaniecarvin.bsky.social) 2025-05-05T22:23:27.486Z

Without popular support for separation, she has seriously limited options. But Moscrop is exactly right: this is live ammo-stuff now, the way Brexit was, the way Trump as a candidate was. She is reckless, and part of a political movement of delusion and dishonesty. Very dangerous

— Bruce Arthur (@brucearthur.bsky.social) 2025-05-05T22:19:08.305Z

Meanwhile, Alberta’s acting Chief Medical Officer of Health spent yesterday morning passive-voicing the decline in vaccination rates as he called for people to step up and get measles vaccinations. If only Danielle Smith and her hand of swivel-eyed loons didn’t boost vaccine hesitancy in order to “own the Libs.” Honestly…

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched 116 drones overnight, targeting mostly Sumy and Donetsk regions. President Zelenskyy visited the Czech Republic to get commitments on more artillery shells, and pilot training.

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Roundup: The changing votes of the 905

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There was an interesting piece in the Star over the weekend, where a bunch of their reporters went out into the 905 belt around Toronto, in order to talk to newcomer communities who have been increasingly switching their votes from the Liberals to the Conservatives, and managed to capture a few of those ridings this time around (and costing the Liberals their majority). But while we shouldn’t always assume that immigrant and newcomer communities will be Liberals, even though there has been this particular trope that they have been told to vote Liberal because Pierre Trudeau really opened up immigration into this country back in the seventies, I do think that trope is overused and misses some of the other points, like the fact that they often pick up on dog-whistling by Conservatives, or that their ways of trying to engage with newcomer communities can be ham-fisted (such as the famous example of Jason Kenney going to every ethno-cultural buffet event and saying things like “I hear you guys hate the gays too. You should vote for us!” And no, that didn’t wind up being successful, even though a mythology was built up around it that doesn’t reflect voter turnout).

What I found instead in this Star piece was that in many of these communities, they were blaming the federal Liberals and Justin Trudeau for things that are squarely within provincial jurisdiction—like housing, or the uptick in crime that that has been hammered away at in those areas. No, none of the reporters made this distinction in the story, and we find ourselves back in the place where nobody in this country wants to hold the premiers to account for their failures. (For their corruption, yes, to an extent, but not their failures to do their jobs). Pierre Poilievre has successfully weaponised the incompetence of the premiers against the federal Liberals and Trudeau in particular, which Trudeau let him get away with time and again because he refused to call the premiers out. But the even bigger irony is that these are regions that have increasingly been voting for Doug Ford, who has been the cause of, or done nothing about, the very problems they are raising as to why they switched their votes.

I would also note that there are some other fairly disturbing undertones in some of the responses from these voters—far-right talking points like “mass immigration,” for example, or the fact that they appear to be pulling up the ladder behind them. They immigrated this country and bought houses in these suburbs, but immigrants who came in behind them and can’t find affordable housing are the problem? Do you see the issue here? I think this is a warning sign we should be paying more attention to, but again, if the premiers did their fucking jobs, we wouldn’t be seeing some of these issues able to take root within these newcomer communities.

Ukraine Dispatch

An overnight drone attack on Kyiv has injured at least 11, as Russia is calling for a ceasefire in advance of celebrations to mark the anniversary of VE Day. The mayor of the Russian port city of Novorossiisk has called a state of emergency after an alleged Ukrainian drone attack. Ukraine says that they shot down a Russian Su-30 fighter jet with a missile fired from one of their maritime drones.

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Roundup: The King is coming!

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Mark Carney gave his first post-election news conference yesterday, and he ensured that it was something of a news tsunami, but also that the tone and tenor of his government is vastly different from that of his predecessor. (Well, his predecessor post-2017ish. For the first couple of years, Trudeau was still trying pretty hard to hold to the things he campaigned on in a promise to be a generational change). This included some timelines for the next few weeks, and it’s a lot. So with that in mind, Carney goes to Washington on Tuesday to meet with Trump, the new Cabinet will be sworn in on the week of the 12th, Parliament will be recalled on the 26th for the election of a new Speaker, and then the 27th will be the Speech From the Throne, and it will be delivered by the King, for the first time since 1977 (and the first time a monarch has opened our parliament since 1957). In addition, he says we have the biggest reorientation of our economy to accomplish since the Second World War, and he’s going to balance the operating budget within three years with no cuts to services (indeed, the rollout of full dental care is continuing on schedule), and he’s not going to enter into any kind of formal arrangement with the NDP as there is no point in doing so. Here are five of the priorities outlined by Carney.

https://twitter.com/RoyalFamily/status/1918325678144884794

There will, of course, be a bunch of grumbling about the King arriving to deliver the Speech, but the thing we need to get out of the way is that he’s the King of Canada, not the King of the UK (or England, which hasn’t had a separate Crown since 1707) as far as we’re concerned, and so he’s not a “foreign monarch.” Canada has had a separate Crown from the UK since the Statute of Westminster in 1931, and even before that, the Crown in Canada manifested in very different ways from the UK since Princess Louise was the Chatelaine of Rideau Hall. (I have more on this in the Crown chapter of my book). The fact that we are bringing out the King to play a bigger role as our sovereignty is threatened is a reflection of just how different we are from the US, and why we will never be part of them, and because Trump idolises the royals, this becomes a thumb in his eye. We cannot forget that.

The other major development yesterday was that Conservative MP Damien Kurek has offered up his seat to Pierre Poilievre, so that he can return to the House of Commons, and surprising nobody, it’s one of the most conservative (and indeed, whitest) ridings in the country, where he got 81.8 percent of the vote in Monday’s election. While Carney said he would call the by-election at the earliest opportunity, Kurek can’t actually resign until a certain point because of rules in place, after which it’s a five-week campaign, and so that means it probably won’t happen until early July, so Poilievre will be out of the Chamber for the entire spring sitting (which is only slated to be about four weeks long). Kurek was six months away from qualifying for an MP pension, so one imagines that the party will work to compensate him in some way.

Ukraine Dispatch

A mass drone attack late Friday hit an apartment block in Kharkiv, injuring 46 people. The US State Department has approved the sale of $310 worth of training and sustainment for Ukraine’s F-16 fighter jets.

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Roundup: Danielle Smith’s weapon of mass distraction

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Alberta premier Danielle Smith continues to be in increasing hot water—and oh, look, her justice minister is related by marriage to someone at the centre of the healthcare procurement scandal—so she has decided to go full-bore into her weapon of mass distraction, which is to attack the federal government and to try and call out Mark Carney for…reasons. She’s asking Carney for a “reset” of relations with Alberta (translation: Give me everything I want), because of course she is. One of the things she announced was a new court challenge of the clean electricity regulations, because of course she is. Nothing like making the lawyers a bunch more money.

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1917945085674791322

Throughout this, Smith insists she’s not stoking separatism *cough* and that these are just “hypotheticals” about the group of loons in the province itching to trigger a plebiscite by starting to gather signatures (before the bill has even passed), but the fact that she is lowering the threshold for just this eventually is a sign that she knows she’s doing it deliberately. And hey, she even says that there’s no appetite in the province for their own separate pension plan after all (because she got spanked by the reality that she couldn’t raid the majority of the CPP on the way out), so that must mean she’s serious about not stoking separatism, right? Does she think we’re all stupid and can’t see through her transparent bullshit?

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Of course, because Scott Moe can’t help himself, he said that he’s a “true Canadian” but wouldn’t stop a public vote on separation if they triggered a plebiscite under provincial legislation. So…as premier he’s willing to also drive out investment and opportunity from companies that have no interest in dealing with this kind of nonsense? Wow, that’s some smart politicking!

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian drone attack late Thursday set houses ablaze in Zaporizhzhia and injured 14, but didn’t cause any deaths.

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Roundup: Nonsense about inflation, again

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Day twenty-nine, and in spite of the holiday, there were again campaign events from all of the main parties, as they begin their last-minute stops through battleground ridings across the country. Mark Carney was in Ottawa, where he warned about the “$140 billion in divisive cuts” in Poilievre’s promises, which they have tallied up as Poilievre has still not released his full platform. Carney will be in Charlottetown, PEI, today, followed by Truro, Nova Scotia, and Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Pierre Poilievre was in Surrey, BC, where he promised to cut government spending in order to reduce inflation…which is already at target, and government spending hasn’t fuelled inflation, because the last spike was caused by global supply chains breaking down in the pandemic, and the effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But because he has to stick to his branding, he’s also trying to all inflation a “tax” and claim that it benefits Brookfield, which in turn benefits Carney, which is not only convoluted logic, but pretty stupid. Poilievre also repeated the falsehood that inflation is being driven by “printed money” (and for the love of Hermes, could a media outlet actually refute that claim, because it’s entirely false. FFS!) Oh, and the cuts will only be on “consultants,” because that’s another magical money tree. Poilievre will be in Scarborough, Ontario, today. And maybe he’ll finally release his costed platform like he says he will.

Jagmeet Singh was in Victoria, BC, where he made a bunch of commitments as to what will appear in the first budget in the next Parliament, and it’s laughable because the NDP will be lucky to get official party status, let alone any influence on just what is in the budget. Singh will be in Nanaimo, BC, followed by Comox and Port Moody today.

In other campaign news, Correctional Services found no evidence that a (clearly faked) document was circulating in prisons that several Conservatives purported was from the Liberals to try to get prisoners to support them in the election. Shocking, I know. Poilievre dodged questions about whether he would repeal the Liberals’ handgun ban. While certain Conservative-aligned chuds have been flooding social media with conspiracy theories about Elections Canada offering pencils instead of pens or sharpies at ballot boxes, Elections Canada reminds you that you can use either. (Said chuds should also be charged).

Speaking of Poilievre's economically illiterate announcement today…

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-04-20T18:21:38.960Z

Ukraine Dispatch

After the “Easter ceasefire,” Kyiv and half of Ukraine are under air raid alerts. Ukraine lists some 2935 violations of Russia’s own “ceasefire,” including blasts reported throughout Russian-occupied Donetsk region.

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Roundup: The relationship with the US has ended

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Day five of the election campaign, and two of the three leaders changed their plans in response to Trump’s tariff announcement—the Conservatives did not, and they can’t pivot because they don’t have media on their plane who can follow them if they have to change plans to respond to events, which is all the more reason why they never should have left them off.

Mark Carney returned to Ottawa to meet with his Canada-US Cabinet committee, and call several premiers including Doug Ford, before addressing the media. There were no campaign announcements today, and said that retaliatory measures will be announced next week when more tariffs are supposed to be coming from Trump, but his remarks were stark, and have been blowing up across a segment of American media—that the relationship we used to have of deepening economic integration and cooperation on security and defence is now over. That’s going to mean a significant retooling of our economy for “strategic economic autonomy,” and that this will be difficult, with no silver bullet. That also means shifting the auto sector for more global trade, which is apparently part of what he discussed with union leaders yesterday, so we’ll see if we get more details about what that could mean. Carney did say that Trump’s office has reached out to talk, so that will likely happen in a couple of days. Afterward, he headed to Montreal for a rally, and today, he plans to have an emergency virtual meeting with the first ministers.

Pierre Poilievre was in Surrey, BC, and his daily announcement was about raising the TFSA limit so long as it was tied to Canadian funds—but he made it sound like government would top-up funds (they won’t), it really only benefits those who can add another $5000 to these accounts, and more to the point, it adds a bunch of bureaucratic reporting mechanisms to prove the funds are Canadian. (Sounds like someone is adding red tape!) He did have a message to Trump to “knock it off,” which was weak and too late, but he keeps talking in terms that the relationship can simply go back to what it was if the tariffs get called off, when it can’t. Democracy has died in the US. There is no ability to trust this administration, and probably the next one. He is off to Nanaimo, BC, today.

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Jagmeet Singh, having pivoted his campaign stop, went to Windsor to announce his plan for entirely Canadian-made cars, and that he’d waive the GST on Canadian-made autos. The promise is likely impossible because supply chains were integrated for a reason, and we have too small of a market to support a purely domestic auto market (and cue all the jokes about Canadian Ladas). He is headed back to Toronto today.

In other election news, former Conservative strategist Kory Teneycke ripped Poilievre a new asshole at an Empire Club event on Wednesday about Poilievre’s inability to meet the moment in the campaign, which was why his poll numbers are tanking, and why he is heading for defeat—particularly because Poilievre has adopted way too many Trump habits to appeal to a certain segment of voters he wants to keep on-side. This as Doug Ford’s personal pollster has made it known that Poilievre’s numbers are grim in Ontario.

www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/66d740f…

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2025-03-28T04:07:44.115Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched 86 drones plus a missile overnight Wednesday, which sparked fires and injured 21 people in Kharkiv, while shelling in Kherson killed two and damaged power supplies, in contravention of the supposed partial “ceasefire.” Russian forces have also been stepping up attacks on Sumy region. Putin wants a “temporary administration” to allow for elections in Ukraine to end the war, when all that needs to happen for him to end it is to simply send his soldiers home.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1905252833827364873

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Roundup: Axing the other tax, just because

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Because he is unable to pivot, or have any kind of plan B, Pierre Poilievre went to a steel plant yesterday to announce that he will not only repeal the full legislation that implemented the carbon levy, but he’ll also repeal the industrial carbon price under the bullshit magical thinking of “technology, not taxes.” The problem? Most provinces have their own industrial pricing schemes, and the federal backstop only applies to a couple of provinces, and mostly it set a price floor so that provinces can’t undercut one another. None of this is actually news, thought, as he’s been saying it for months, but most legacy media treated this as new and novel. Industry doesn’t like his plan—they prefer the industrial pricing system because it provides stability. But Poilievre needs a tax to axe, so he’s going all-in on making this a carbon price election after all, because he’s that incapable.

 

The problem with “technology not taxes” is that the price signals sent by carbon pricing are what incentivise companies to invest in the technology to reduce emissions. They won’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts. They need to feel the squeeze before they’ll invest to make the changes, and that won’t happen if they are given free licence to just pollute without consequence. You would think that a conservative party would understand market dynamics, but no. They don’t have an intellectual grounding any longer, they’re just rage-baiters looking to “own the Libs” by any means necessary. Oh, and the EU is going to start putting in carbon border adjustments, so if we’re pivoting our trade to those markets, well, our not having a price will find us being punished by their markets, so maybe this is a really dumb idea after all.

Feeling this so hard.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-03-18T01:50:50.104Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine’s military shot down 90 out of 170 drones overnight Monday, with damage and injuries reported in Odesa. Russians also claim that they are moving ahead in Zaporizhzhia region, saying they are pushing through Ukrainian lines. Ukraine has attacked energy facilities in Russia’s Astrakhan region, sparking a fire.

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